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Category: New York Giants

Head-to-head games and snake drafts have become fantasy baseball’s standards, but the industry began nearly 40 years ago as AL/NL-only Rotisserie auction leagues. Millions still play those games, and there is an artifact from that format with utility for every style of play.

Dollar values continue to be convenient data points that accurately measure each player’s contribution to his team’s success or failure. The standard auction budget has been $260 per team since almost the beginning, which allows us to set benchmarks for player value. Thirty dollars is the generally accepted delineator for star performance; fewer than 20 players reach that threshold each year.

“It gives us an opportunity to compete,” Gentry said. “It gives us an opportunity to compete at the highest level, so our guys are excited about it. We have a ton of respect for the Warriors and what they’ve done and what they’ve accomplished the last four years. But we also know that we can compete against them, and that’s our goal, is we’ve got to understand that and have the confidence to go out and do that.”

As Gentry opened his post-practice remarks inside the same building he has seen the Warriors have so much success in over the last few years, he seemed to enjoy the ambiance that the old building provided.

“It’s good to be back here,” Gentry said. “If you’re playing against this team and it’s not the first round then you’ve done pretty good I think.”

NBA commissioner Adam Silver and NBPA executive director Michele Roberts have discussed scenarios to end the requirement for American players to wait one year after high school graduation to enter the NBA draft, but no formal agreement could be reached before the NBPA’s executive committee, including president Chris Paul, gather for a meeting at the end of the NBA playoffs in June.

Silver and Roberts have both expressed a desire to change the rule, but it remains to be seen how the process of negotiating a rule change between the league and players will unfold.

But when McMillan was asked about the calls, he told a story about splitting his team up in practice and that even then the starters or star players tend to get advantageous calls.

“Sometimes it’s human nature to have this player and this player and give it to this player,” he said playfully without identifying names.

Kill coached at SIU from 2001 until 2007, leading the Salukis to a 55-32 record, five straight FCS title games and three straight Gateway Conference championships. He won the Eddie Robinson National Coach of the Year Award in 2004.

Easter is over, the draft is coming, and the PFT PM podcast will be bringing you plenty of late-afternoon content from now through the end of the month, and beyond.

Monday’s Five-Down Territory edition looks at the Josh Rosen situation and more — including answers to plenty of questions.

TMZ claims the parents of Smith’s alleged victim persuaded him to enter an unidentified rehabilitation facility after their daughter, described as Smith’s fiancee, called police and accused him of “beating her up.”

Smith turns himself in to San Francisco police and is booked on domestic-violence related charges. He is held on $30,000 bond on misdemeanor charges of willful infliction of corporal injury, assault with force likely to produce injury, false imprisonment and vandalism.

He spent four seasons with the Jets after they made him a second-round pick and last season with the Giants. Smith has played 35 games with 31 starts, going 12-19.

Smith has completed 57.9 percent of his passes for 6,174 yards with 29 touchdowns and 36 interceptions.

Russell Wilson is the only quarterback on Seattle’s roster after the Seahawks cut backup Trevone Boykin earlier this week.

For those who are still entrenched in the fantasy playoffs or battling for a roto title, these next three days will challenge both your patience and your WiFi connection. Acting quickly to react to resting stars and ever-shifting rotations will prove pivotal. The clearest path to statistical success at this stage of the season is to embrace the variance these chaotic final days produce by acting on the news of the night.

The most glaring principal difference between Las Vegas and other cities isn’t casino gambling — it’s sports betting, the legal kind, anyway. Forty states have casinos, according to the American Gaming Association. Only Nevada, however, can offer a legal bet on the Super Bowl. And that makes the NFL nervous — even though sports betting currently takes place in every state and every stadium via the dozens of offshore sportsbooks that serve the U.S. online.

The February 2015 meeting at the gaming research center was the first between UNLV and the Raiders. It took place a year before Davis appeared in a picture with influential billionaire casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and was kept secret for three years afterward.

League minimum salaries vary by how long a player’s been in the NFL, and players don’t all make the same amount, so this calculation isn’t the same for everyone. Super Bowl money is less a big deal for Tom Brady ($22 million a year, not counting endorsements) than for some practice squad pickup who’s just catching on.

But, for example: The minimum salary for a player with between four and six years of NFL service time was $775,000 this season. Players in that boat can get up to a 14.5 percent raise if they’re on a team that reaches and wins the Super Bowl.

Winning a Super Bowl is a lot of motivation. But the money on the line makes the game a far bigger deal for the players than many realize.

The second half of the 2017-18 NBA season is here, which means Las Vegas bookmakers are bracing for the bizarre, but expected, ritual of tanking.

Nick Friedell: One of Wiggins’ biggest flaws is that he shows up in certain games and disappears in others — so the answer is that there really isn’t one.

If the Wolves want to solidify their playoff positioning, they need Wiggins to be more consistent, but at this point in his career he hasn’t shown the ability to do that game after game.

In a sense, you might say time in a physical sense began with the Big Bang which was over 10 billion years ago. The thing is that that particular perspective is, as I said, something that happened independent of human beings. That happened a long time ago and the universe has been evolving in time independent of us.

In a sense, there’s two things that are going on at the time of a game — which is to say the physical time which is what the clocks are measuring, but then there’s the psychological perspective, that is to say how people in the audience are perceiving time, Mallett explains patiently. In other words, it might seem like the game is going long for them or it seems like it’s going on too short for them and those things are relative to them.

James, who has made it to seven straight Finals out of the East with the Cavs and Miami Heat, contended that no change is necessary.

Thanks to commissioner Roger Goodell’s vow to double overall revenue by 2027, the NFL is trying — and largely succeeding, if the draft’s TV ratings are any indication — to become a year-round sport with a “big” event each month.

That’s why the immediate aftermath of the Broncos’ victory over the Panthers in Super Bowl 50 last week will be just a temporary lull in the NFL’s jam-packed calendar.

But this is what TV, with ESPN establishing and sustaining the formula, has done and continues to do to sports. That, too, constitutes malice of forethought. Soon, those calling the shots will never be able to return sports to a place they’ve never been.

We’ve seen it dozens of times. Only occasionally, however, does it make sense: The unreturned kickoff just before the end of the first half.

Yet, it’s often seen but ignored on TV because that’s the time to promote the halftime show.

Sunday, the Jets, down 10-0, had three timeouts left but allowed the clock to run from 1:10 to :32 before Denver kicked a field goal to make it 13-0. CBS’ Trent Green, far better than most analysts, said what we were thinking: Why didn’t Todd Bowles call time with 1:10 left?

It’s too bad wide receiver Victor Cruz, released by the Bears, couldn’t revive his career in Chicago. Cruz was a terrific story and an exciting player for the Giants in 2011 and 2012. But he hasn’t been able to recapture that for several years now, and it’s fair to wonder if his NFL career is pretty much done.

In short, the Redskins would need Cousins to be a “truck” (QB capable of carrying his team with little-to-no support), when he really hasn’t shown the football world he can do that.

After Rex Ryan was fired last season, Lynn served as interim head coach for the Bills for the final game and was considered one of the front-runners for the job.

Lynn, though, said he never thought he was going to get the Bills job because of his association with Ryan and the assumption he was part of the culture Ryan brought to teams, despite how different his personality is from Ryan’s.

But Lynn, a long-time assistant deserving of his chance, got the Chargers job instead, and the Bills hired former Panthers assistant Sean McDermott.

“I’m where I want to be,” Lynn told reporters this week. “I interviewed there [in Buffalo], and they went a different direction. I didn’t think I was the favorite there anyway because how many times do you hire a guy from the staff when you fire the head coach? It doesn’t happen too often.’’

The signing bonus also presents a major psychological barrier to trading. The “sunk cost trap” is something we all fall into in our daily lives. If you feel you already paid a large amount of money for something that no longer does the job you expected, you still try to fix it and make it work because you paid so much.

Yet on another night of Home Run Derby in the Year of the Home Run, no lead was safe.

Puig lined a two-run shot in the ninth, the record 22nd homer in a single Series, and Chris Taylor’s two-out single off Chris Devenski tied it.

“I think this whole series has been an emotional roller coaster,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “It’s the two best teams playing for a championship. And these are two teams that play 27 outs.”

The legend of Hoodie Melo was birthed this summer as multiple videos of him working out in a hoodie surfaced across social media. Melo ran with it by showing up to Thunder media day and opening night in his new signature fashion piece. This costume’s best aspect is its simplicity, plus it’s an excuse to wear a hoodie-jersey combo that looks pretty good but doesn’t really fly in the real world.

Despite the Dolphins getting shutout and the Ravens losing Joe Flacco due to a concussion in the first half, this ugly Thursday night game still went over the closing total of 38.

The Ravens led 20-0 entering the fourth quarter and it almost didn’t seem possible for these offenses to combine for 18 more points. It turned out there would be no points scored by either offense in the final quarter, but unfortunately for those on the under, the Ravens’ defense scored not one, not two, but three touchdowns in a 9:47 span. Jimmy Smith provided the third defensive touchdown, a 50-yard pick-six that sent the total over by two points with 4:28 left in the game, crushing those who took the under.

The Patriots, who just got new turf at Gillette Stadium in May, are changing their playing surface once again.

Work began Sunday and the turf had been removed by Monday afternoon. The new turf is expected to be ready in time for the Patriots’ next home game, Sept. 24 against the Texans. It’s the third surface the facility has had since March 2014.

A Patriots spokesperson told ESPN the turf did not meet the team’s standards, even though it met NFL and MLS safety standards. The Pats share the stadium with the New England Revolution.

X-rays taken Sunday confirmed a dislocated ankle for Darby, but no break. The third-year cornerback, acquired by the Eagles last month in a trade with the Bills, was covering Redskins tight end Jordan Reed when he appeared to step on Reed’s foot. Darby collapsed and immediately grasped at his ankle.

Darby will not need surgery and could return to the field when the Eagles face the Redskins again on Monday, Oct. 23.

“It was tough to see him go down, but we had to rebound and I think we did that,” cornerback Jalen Mills said following Sunday’s win. “He’s our brother and we’re going to be with him no matter what the injury is like. He’s going to come back at some point. Until he does come back, we have to fill in around him.”

Jim Brown in the Raider’s uniform was enough to make me want to throw up. As I recall, the Browns immediately moved to re-secure the reserve clause that was in effect then so he could not sign with Oakland without compensation.

The Akron native was the first overall pick in the 2003 NBA Draft, and ushered in a new era for the Cavaliers, leading the team to its first NBA Finals in 2007. But after seven seasons, he left in free agency to join the Heat before returning to the Cavaliers four years later.

Cribbs was signed as an undrafted rookie out of Kent State and become one of the best kick returners in NFL history over eight seasons with the Browns. He wasn’t resigned in 2013, and spent two more seasons in the NFL, with the Jets and Colts.

The A’s reliever was inspired to join the fight after he traveled through some of the poorest parts of the Dominican Republic while playing winter baseball on the island following the 2014 season.

“It breaks your heart because you’re going through these places where you’re told not to drink the water,” Hendriks said. “We can afford to buy bottled water, some of these people can’t.

“It was a very humbling experience.”

Hendriks also does a lot of work for animal rescue, working with Players for Pits in Chicago and Mission K-9 Rescue in Houston.

Two of the Jaguars’ most important players will not be on the field Thursday when they face the Buccaneers.

Running back Leonard Fournette is nursing a foot injury, while receiver Marqise Lee has a right ankle sprain, coach Doug Marrone said.

To play it safe, Marrone will keep both players sidelined as they heal.

“We’re just being smart on it,” Marrone said, via ESPN.com. “Obviously we’re going to be smart with him and Marqise, so we’ll probably hold those guys out for at least until after the game.”

Fournette has not been practicing and Marrone said the former LSU star will evaluate him over the weekend. Fournette did practice after the Jags’ win against the Patriots last week, but said his foot was hurting Saturday after practice.

Whether it’s right or not, basketball players have an impact on children. That’s why the league emphasizes professionalism at all times, and hands out suspensions or fines when players act out. But there’s a grey area, as we saw earlier this year with Kyrie Irving.

During All-Star week, the title-winning point guard said on a podcast that “the Earth is flat,” a theory that has been proven false, but has gained popularity lately.

His comments were mocked by journalists and NBA fans because it’s a stupid theory. But beyond the jokes, his comments were actually harmful because kids who listen to him are likely to believe him. And according to an NPR article, that’s exactly what happened.

In a story headlined, “The Ongoing Battle Between Science Teachers And Fake News,” NPR’s Avi Wolfman-Arent spoke to a science teacher who said Irving’s comments have made his kids believe in the flat Earth theory.

She tells her students — like Nick Gurol, whose middle-schoolers believe the Earth is flat — that, as hard as they try, science teachers aren’t likely to change a student’s misconceptions just by correcting them.

It’s still not clear just how long the Ravens could be without Joe Flacco. Initial reports said it could be as long as six weeks, but that got walked back to a week of rest for his ailing back.

Brees is in the 90s again, because he always is. He shares the top spot with Brady in awareness, being the only two quarterbacks with the rating, which means his other areas will be down slightly over previous years. Brees will still be good, but he’s definitely slowing down from 2010, when he was the 99 overall player in the pool.

Big Ben’s claim to fame in Madden has always been that he’s near-impossible to sack, and that will continue with his 82 strength rating. EA Sports note that this is the highest in the league, a spot he had to compete with Cam Newton in the past.

The EA Sports blog lets us in on a few more ratings. Russell Wilson and Andrew Luck both sneak into the top tier with 90 overall ratings, while Cam Newton naturally took a step back following the slump after his 2015 MVP season. He’s rated at 88 overall.

Two interceptions in three seasons wouldn’t be so bad for a safety if he had plus coverage skills to make up for the lack of takeaways. But Pryor doesn’t have those skills, consistently getting burned deep and contributing to the Jets’ defensive collapse last season. Seeing Ha Ha Clinton-Dix go just three picks later surely must sting for Jets fans these days.

FIrst and foremost was tight end Rico Gathers, who was drafted by the Cowboys in the sixth round of the 2016 NFL draft. Gathers played college basketball at Baylor, and he hadn’t played football since the eighth grade

There’s no shortage of optimism for NFL fans in the spring, and nothing says hope springs eternal like a brand new free agent acquisition. The player your team just signed is totally going to be the difference this year; you just know it!

In 1985, Smith was the draft’s No. 1 overall pick. The Buffalo Bills in the season prior were 2-14. The Browns last season were 1-15.

“He is going into a similar situation, the first player picked, a team statistically the worst in the league,” Smith said. “Big shoes to fill. He needs to hit the ground running but not ignore the process. There are going to be frustrations. There are going to be times he needs to talk to someone with experience who can help in his ability to grow. That type of maturity must take place each and every day and in it he must become more confident each and every day. I understand he will be spending most of his time in Cleveland this offseason. That is smart. Get acclimated to the job.”

The Browns failed to re-sign Terrelle Pryor after his breakout year and appear unlikely to get Josh Gordon on the field this fall. Their current starters are the underwhelming duo of Corey Coleman and Kenny Britt, and while the team has eight other receivers currently under contract, their depth chart looks like a list of randomly generated names.

Cruz could head to Ohio and help DeShone Kizer find his place in the league, but signing with the Browns has traditionally been the last gasp in a veteran’s career.